A superscalar CPU architecture implements a form of parallelism called instruction-level

parallelism within a single processor. It thereby allows faster CPU throughput as would otherwisebe not possible with the same clock rate. A superscalar processor executes more than oneinstruction during a clock cycle by simultaneously dispatching multiple instructions to redundantfunctional units on the processor. Each functional unit is not a separate CPU core but anexecution resource within a single CPU such as an arithmetic logic unit, a bit shifter, ora multiplier.

While a superscalar CPU is typically also pipelined, they are two different performanceenhancement techniques.

The superscalar technique is traditionally associated with several identifying characteristics. Notethese are applied within a given CPU core.